Escape
by Oreramar
Summary: It wasn't supposed to be like this. All they wanted was to play the latest VR game on the market together. Instead they got trapped inside of it, most of them with no memory of who they really were...except for Hiccup, who knew very well that something was wrong. Unfortunately, this world is convinced that he's a dangerous criminal. This won't be easy. Modern Video Game AU.
1. The Game

**A/N: I was challenged on tumblr a few days ago to come up with a scenario for a HTTYD 'sucked into a video game' AU. I liked the summarized result so much that I wanted to read a fic about it. I had to write the fic instead. So here we go...**

* * *

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Hiccup felt the foreign fabric, leather and fur of his patchy light armor, the boots on his feet, the weight of a short sword pulling at his hip, the hewn stone of the wall under his hands. He could smell the air, free of the tang of car exhaust but otherwise heavy with the scents of other, more organic kinds of waste. His lip was split from a fall earlier; it stung, and still tasted faintly of blood. He could hear the clatter of metal on the street, booted footsteps and shouted orders. He drew further back into the shadows and tried to quiet his breathing, tried to reach the control menu, to quit without saving and resurface immediately in the real world.

He should have been able to access it as easily as thought. He'd done it before. Then again, he also should have been able to feel the fabric and foam of his reclining chair beneath him, to smell the wood-scented air freshener his dad kept in the hall, to hear his cat purring in the sunlight on his bed. He should have been aware of the truth as well as the illusion.

He couldn't find any of it.

He had never realized what an anchor reality was until he couldn't reach it at all.

VR was never, _ever_ this immersive.

" _Check the alleyways, he can't have gone far!"_

His heart hammered on the inside of his armor as though it was trying to get out, to fly free without the rest of him. He looked around in desperation, then up. An open window yawned just above his head. He wasn't much of a climber normally, but desperation, he thought, just might give him enough of a boost to make it.

The thudding boots and rattling plate mail drew nearer on the street outside. Hiccup hauled himself up on the crates he'd used as cover, then on cracks in the stonework and, finally, the wooden window frame. He tumbled through before any of the guards could rush down the alley, drag him off the wall, and quite probably stick him full of sharp pointy objects (and he couldn't help but wonder, in a hushed corner of his mind, what sort of effect those objects might have when his mind was so utterly trapped in the game that it had superseded reality to the point where not even controls worked anymore).

He didn't tumble through before some guard managed to spot his boots disappearing into the darkness and yell, " _he's here!"_ to the rest of his cohort.

Hiccup hissed a curse, scrambled upright in the darkened room, and bolted in search of an escape route which would take him somewhere hidden, secret, and safe – somewhere beyond the eyes of every single virtual resident of the city, and especially beyond the eyes of those more significantly armed and dangerous than your average humble citizen. He ran, but with the sinking feeling that he had no chance, no real hope.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

* * *

The city was in chaos. An uproar. Bedlam, pandemonium, turmoil, an absolute kerfuffle.

"And it's not even our fault this time," his sister snickered, giving him a shove with her shoulder that nearly sent him pinwheeling off of the roof. He pinned her with a nasty glare, but it was wasted; she was staring down at the streets below with the slightly-dreamy expression of a Thorston gazing into the face of madness itself and finding it beautiful.

He considered shoving her back, watching her roll down the shingles and across the gutter and thud into the dusty street, cursing and screeching all the way.

He decided just to watch the show unfolding beneath them instead.

It was, indeed, beautiful. He hadn't seen the place looking so upturned since…since…His mind blanked out, but he shook the odd feeling away. They'd done some crazy things, his sister and he, he felt it in his bones. So what if none of them were coming to mind right away. They were in there somewhere, he knew, and they'd turn up eventually.

Another line of guards clattered beneath their vantage point, fanning out down side streets, kicking over barrels and upending crates as they went, scattering the simple citizens still on the streets like dogs amid sheep. The sounds of shouting men, shattered clay, and splintered wood were a symphony the twins could only _wish_ they were conducting.

"All this for one guy," Tuffnut mused. It was almost unfair. They were the two most skilled, successful, and elusive rogues the city had ever seen, and they'd never warranted this much effort.

"Yeah, well, he's a dangerous criminal or something. Dead or alive and all that, and probably only alive so that they can off him later. That kinda thing."

"Yeah," Tuffnut agreed, mostly so that he had something to say while his brain turned over a niggling little _something_ at the back of it, like a kernel stuck between his teeth.

"How do you know?" he asked before he really knew what he was trying to say.

Ruffnut must have had that same kernel stuck in her teeth, because she only paused a moment before knowing his meaning. Or maybe it was one of those twin things people went on about. Maybe he should just push her off the roof after all.

"I don't know," she said. " _Everybody_ knows."

It was true. Only a day had passed since the criminal first appeared and he was already common knowledge, even though Tuffnut couldn't strictly remember actually seeing any wanted posters or talking to anybody about it – anybody except for his sister, at least, and she'd been with him all day and if he hadn't seen posters or engaged in outside conversation she certainly hadn't either. Something about this thought gnawed at his brain for a few moments before he shrugged it off again. Weird, but there you go. The world was a mysterious place or whatever.

Mysterious, like the mystery of whatever this guy had done to deserve a manhunt the likes of which Tuffnut had never seen before. Something a street away smashed and the frantic clucking of a chicken rose over the sudden cacophony.

"Think he killed someone?" Ruffnut asked in idle fascination. The chicken quieted, but the ruckus beyond only continued.

Tuffnut tried to envision their unknown intruder, paragon of chaos that he apparently was, and came away with a strange impression of gangly limbs, a narrow frame, perhaps a little more strength than first glance conveyed but still…

"Nah, doesn't seem like the type," he said, mouth working once again before his brain could catch up.

"Eh, I guess. Though maybe if he took someone by surprise with that sword…"

"Wait, sword? What sword?"

"That sword," Ruffnut said, pointing at a roof across the way and the hide-armored figure shimmying awkwardly across it on his stomach, all lanky limbs and ruffled brown hair and, yes, a sword at his side and _weirdly familiar, why is that?_

"Oh. Yeah. That. Maybe, I guess?"

"Though then again, if he did it with his bare hands then it's only more impressive, right?"

Tuffnut felt increasingly left behind, by both his sister and his own brain activity.

"Maybe?" he tried again. With luck she might take the hint and explain things.

Instead she stood up on the roof, said, "I'm gonna go say hi," and took a running leap across, firing her retractable grappling bow at the chimney stacks to help her clear the distance. Tuffnut saw the fugitive flip over and scramble backwards away from her as she landed, freezing when he saw her face. He never once so much as twitched toward the sword at his side.

"Huh. Guess he's not a murderer or whatever," Tuffnut mused. "I was right."

He took off after Ruffnut. Wouldn't hurt to give the guy the full Thorston experience now, since that was apparently his sister's plan, and besides, he was admittedly curious – in a disdainful cool cat kind of way, of course. And oh, he knew what they _should_ do as good people (or rogues) of the city – call the guards, maybe pull a citizen's arrest sort of thing and find out if there was any reward money to be had. It was two against one and the guy looked more shocked at their appearance than actually guarded, so it wouldn't even be a fight…

Tuffnut shoved the thoughts away, more intrigued by this muffled sense of familiarity and, even better, the notion of more chaos to be made by helping this apparent stranger. After all, the longer he was on the loose the more frazzled the guards seemed to get, and there were few things Tuffnut liked better than frazzled guards. His sister would agree with him, he knew.

Matching grins spread across their faces, and the stranger, still sprawled across the shingles, began to look wary – but not actually afraid, Tuffnut noted in a flash.

Oh yes. This would be _fun._

* * *

When the criminal was first discovered, he figured it'd be an hour, a day, maybe two on the very outside before the guy was either brought down or brought in. He also figured it'd be really, really nice if he was the one to do it. He knew it was unbecoming of a guard to daydream, knew it in the same way he knew that it was his duty to protect the city and that this newcomer was a danger, a fugitive, an element to be detained if not destroyed, but he couldn't help himself. He envisioned himself a hero to the city, modestly accepting accolades, a seat of honor at a celebratory feast, a parade in his honor, hell, maybe even a small statue in one of the squares. Nothing elaborate of course, just something roughly life-size, him in his armor and sword, open-faced helmet tucked under his arm to better show his features, carved from nice stone – marble, maybe, if they were particularly impressed by some detail or other of his capture of the nefarious no-good renegade.

(For some reason, his daydreams never really included that part, and when they did involve an inkling of that situation there was never any blood. Always capture, never kill. He didn't dwell on this; it wasn't important _how_ it happened, after all, and besides, isn't catching the bad guy the tricky bit? Any idiot can lop important bits off someone with a sharpened metal stick. It took real finesse and cunning and fighting prowess to bring someone down without just offing them…right?)

Whatever the case, his dreams had been wrong on at least one point so far: it had been a week. One whole week and they'd picked the city over three times and were going for a fourth. Sometimes the guy was spotted here or there, always too far away for Snotlout to hear about it let alone reach the scene before he vanished again, slipping through what seemed to be the increasingly incompetent clutches of the rest of the force.

Something about the whole situation just made Snotlout endlessly frustrated.

Clearly, if he'd been the one to catch sight of this criminal all those times, the search would already be over. _He_ wouldn't fail. _He_ wouldn't find their quarry only to lose it again three minutes later. Oh no, if it was _him_ this guy'd be cooling off in a nice secure little cell while the city, freed of terror at last, partied to no end.

So maybe it was a _good_ thing he kept escaping. It gave Snotlout a challenge…and a chance.

A chance that came to fruition one drizzly afternoon.

He hadn't even been looking _for_ the fugitive at the time, just sort of looking _around_ in the open-air marketplace. His eyes had landed briefly on a hooded figure buying food at a stand, and they would have wandered on had said figure not gotten turned around by another guy bumping against his shoulder. His hood fell back a bit, and Snotlout found himself looking straight at the guy's newly uncovered face.

 _Familiar_ , said a feeling in his gut. Intensely familiar, like he hadn't just seen the guy before, but like he'd known him personally. Not as a friend, really, not quite; there was a shade too much antagonism for that, though not enough deep, active dislike for him to be an enemy either. It was a strange blend of things – grudging respect, disdainful admiration, the notion that he could throw the dude under the proverbial cart for the little things but for the big ones he'd…

The green eyes across the way flicked over him, cataloguing face and armor and the helmet Snotlout had taken off – just long enough to wipe his forehead, really! – and they widened. Realization thundered through Snotlout's muddled thoughts at the same time, striking him like a hammer to the head.

 _It's HIM!_

The familiar stranger wheeled around and bolted for the narrow space between two buildings. Before another thought passed through his head Snotlout had dropped his helmet and dashed off in pursuit.

His quarry was fast and had a head start, but Snotlout still managed to keep up just enough to see flickers of motion – the hem of the cloak and the heels of his boots – as he rounded the sharp corners and winding corridors of the city's back ways. Then, the one time he thought he'd lost him, he heard the splinter of wood giving way, a thud, a pained cry, and his pace quickened, heart roaring in his ears and excitement clogging his throat.

 _This is it, this is it, I finally have him!_

He skidded around a final corner and stopped, facing the dead end and the young man pulling himself upright against a wall. His hood had fallen completely, his hair a ruffled mess, and he stood at a slight crouch, breathing hard and staring at Snotlout.

Cornered. A week of eluding capture and finally he was cornered! By _Snotlout_ himself!

Snotlout took a step toward him and realized his hands were empty. Then he realized that there was something fundamentally wrong with that. It was somehow harder than he would have thought to reach for his sword, draw it, and point it at the fugitive – _the_ _dangerous criminal, remember that_ – standing before him.

"You…you're under arrest," Snotlout said, injecting as much bravado as he could muster into the words. He took another hesitant step forward and fumbled for something else to say – surely there should have been some sort of script. "You…ah…put your hands where I can see them!"

The criminal – _he had a name, a name on the tip of his tongue though of course they'd never met before so how could he know it?_ – did indeed slowly bring his hands before him, spread at waist height, but it looked less like surrender and more like a gesture of conciliation. It didn't say ' _I am the bad guy and you caught me fair and square,'_ it said ' _how about you join me in acting like calm, rational people and we'll find a solution instead of flipping out at everything.'_

Like the rest of the guy, it felt like something Snotlout had experienced innumerable times before. He didn't like it.

"On your knees!" he improvised, trying to think back to anything that could tell him how this was supposed to go, but he couldn't recall anything in training (any training at all, actually) and while he was sure he'd seen _something_ like an arrest before, somewhere and somehow, the details were muddled. "I'm taking you in and…you, uh, have the right to remain silent!"

He had only a moment to feel pleased with himself – that part, at least, had felt right – before the criminal ruined everything again by disregarding both parts of that order entirely. Hands still held loose and palms-out in front of him, still standing firmly on both feet, he sighed, and then he spoke.

"Really, Snotlout?"

Something in his tone was almost disappointed. It stung a little.

Stung with annoyance, Snotlout amended. Annoyance, because he's not acting like a captive should and it's throwing the arrest all _off!_

"How do you know my name?" he demanded, raising his sword a bit higher. The tip wavered roughly level with the criminal's neck. It didn't look right.

"I know your name because I know you," the other said, as mild as if he was explaining simple logic to a child. "You've forgotten, but I'm pretty sure you know me, too. The twins did. Well. Sort of."

"I've never seen you before in my life," Snotlout snapped, shoving aside every insidious thought, every wordless instinct, which said otherwise. So did the skeptically raised eyebrow on the face before him.

"Oh, really? Wow. Must've been some other snotty oversized cousin of mine who tried to blow out the candles and open the presents at my fifth birthday…just for example. You wouldn't believe it, but he's your spitting image. Small world."

He tried to ignore the stranger's words (because he _had_ to be a stranger), but they were pulling up faint memories of candles on a cake and shiny paper and things he thought were his, being confused when he was told no, years of hearing the story told with laughter and teasing remarks and all the while image after image of a small, scrawny, freckle-faced boy with the same green eyes and floppy auburn-brown hair as the man in front of him, neither friend nor foe but _family_ …

He was still talking, still going on in that annoying sarcastic drawl of his. Snotlout's sword was drooping at the tip, trembling in his confusion and frustration – didn't this guy _hear him_ when he said he was under arrest and should be silent? It all would've gone so well if he'd just stayed silent!

"…Even has the same name as you and everything. You'd think it'd be rarer, nickname or not – I mean, it's pretty much tradition where we're from, but not exactly a _common_ one looking at the rest of the world, so what are the odds? Pretty unbelievable, huh?"

"Shut up," Snotlout said, but the words barely came out above a whisper. If the stranger – the _criminal_ – heard them at all, he ignored them.

"Then again, you're usually happiest believing whatever you want to, so I don't know what else I expected here. It was definitely too much to hope that this'd be easy, especially given how pig-headed you can b—"

"SHUT UP, HICCUP!"

The shout rang in the sudden silence between them. Snotlout's mind was frozen, filled with nothing but the echo of that last word – that name – while his would-be-arrestee looked annoyingly satisfied. The sword had fallen to point at the cobbled ground and the splintered pieces of wood still scattered there from the crate that had broken and stymied the latter's escape attempt.

"I knew you knew me," he said.

Snotlout shook his head.

"No, I don't. I can't. I—" the sword swung up again to point at Hiccup's chest. "I—I've got to arrest you!"

Now Hiccup just looked exasperated. It was another familiar expression, and though Snotlout tried to push that familiarity away it was starting to feel like he was attempting to stamp out a forest fire using nothing but his boots.

"Oh, come on, Snot! I know you take your games seriously, but this is getting ridicu—"

" _This way!"_ a faint voice called, accompanied by the rapid thud of boots and the clatter of plate mail. One part of Snotlout knew they were reinforcements, maybe drawn by his sudden shout a moment ago, and was almost glad of them. The other part saw Hiccup suddenly go grim and pale, saw his hand drop for the first time to grip the scabbard of his sword – not a threat, but an unconscious gesture of one searching for security in whatever was available.

"Let me go," Hiccup said, staring at the entrance of their little cul-de-sac alley. The sounds were growing louder, closer. His voice grew more desperate. "Snotlout, they'll kill me, and I don't know what it means to die in a game you can't escape."

For a moment Snotlout saw fame and fortune, his name regaled as a hero's, banquets and parades and maybe even a statue in the square. Then he saw what that would take – saw himself handing Hiccup over to who knew what, saw the pale fear on his face, saw a sword stained red with his cousin's blood, and he knew, more surely than he had ever known anything he could recall, that while he'd happily throw Hiccup under the proverbial cart for the little things, for the big ones he'd fight off the world at his back.

He dropped his sword, rushed forward, and laced his fingers together at his knee. Hiccup stared at him for only a moment, then, without further prompting, placed one boot in the makeshift stirrup and took the boost up, grabbing the edge of a window and hauling himself through just as the first guard came clanking around the corner.

Snotlout quickly mimed a missed swipe at his cousin's disappearing legs, jumping a bit for good measure, and looked around.

"He's getting away!" he shouted. "Quick, find another way in!"

The others immediately wheeled around and charged off up the alley. Snotlout stopped to retrieve his sword. He was, objectively speaking, the only person in the alleyway when he heard Hiccup's quieted voice call down, "Hey, Snotlout? Thanks."

Objectively speaking, nobody was there in the alley to hear him reply, "Hurry up and run, you moron."

Then the city guard marched off after his fellows, his thoughts in a muddle, because nothing made sense anymore.

Even so, he realized that he had, for some reason, simply accepted Hiccup as his cousin.

It didn't make sense either, but for once it was something that just felt right.

* * *

Another line of guardsmen clattered by outside, the sound only muffled by the thin wooden wall and door that separated the shop interior from the street, and Fishlegs hoped they wouldn't be barging in to search the place again. He understood that they were getting antsy, what with their fugitive managing to stay at large for over two weeks now. He understood that the man seemed to disappear fairly frequently in the area. He understood that someone had actually injured him not long ago and not far from here and now the guards were swarming the area in search of the nearest possible bolt-hole, banking on him not being able to get far on his own in his condition.

Still, he thought, opening a cabinet behind the main counter and fumbling through the slightly dusty wares inside, it wasn't easy to run a shop when your crates of backstock were constantly being smashed open. That wasn't even mentioning the one or two…ah, items of interest…Fishlegs sometimes kept back there. Items that would probably get him into a lot of trouble if found in his possession, so to speak.

He chose a red bottle half the size of his palm, gave it a shake, checked the wax seal, and nodded. It should do. God, he _hoped_ it would do.

Then, with one last slightly nervous glance at the front door, he went into the back.

It was dim, lit by a single lantern hanging on the wall and what little light seeped through the doorway around him, but he was used to it. His gaze roamed over shelves and stacks of goods, a small pyramid of six surviving crates, a lone barrel in the far corner. It stopped and flickered back the other way, searching frantically – _he was just-!_

"I'm here, Fish," said a cracked, weary voice from near the floor. Fishlegs blinked and looked harder at the corner with the barrel. It was like an adjustment of the eyes; one moment he saw only nondescript shadows, utterly unimportant, and the next he saw the form of a lanky young man, his back half propped up between barrel and wall, one leg sprawling, his arm tucked firmly around his side and his face so pale that Fishlegs could see every freckle.

"You're getting really good at that," he said, kneeling ponderously in front of Hiccup and quickly offering him the bottle. A moment's consideration had him taking it back, unsealing the top, and returning it.

"Thanks," Hiccup said, and he knocked the contents of the bottle back. A strange grimace crossed his face, and when he next spoke his voice was clearer. "I swear, if it wasn't for the healing I'd think you were giving me colored water to drink. Tasteless medicine is weird."

"Did it work all right?" Fishlegs asked, taking the empty bottle back. It would dissolve soon, magic melting it away now that the potion it had held was drained, but he needed something in his hands for at least a minute.

Hiccup prodded at his side, stretching cautiously.

"Mostly," he said. "Still tender, but I don't think it's actually open anymore."

"What happened?"

Hiccup shrugged, pushing himself up to sit in a more secure position. Color was already returning to his face, thanks to the potion, though blood still stained his armor and the hand he had used to put pressure on the wound.

"Bounty hunter," he said, "or maybe an assassin. I'm not really sure. He was in plain clothes, like almost any other normal guy out there. I didn't even realize he'd recognized me, or that he had a knife, until…well. Either way, I guess I was pretty lucky."

Questions and statements queued up in Fishlegs' mind, from the morbidly curious ' _did you fight him off? How? You didn't kill him…did you?'_ to the simply morbid ' _Realistically speaking, he probably wasn't an assassin; they don't tend to miss.'_ He wasn't sure what to say or ask first.

"You should be more careful," was what came out.

"I'm trying, Fishlegs."

"Not hard enough!" he blurted before he could think better of it. "I mean, I know you have safe spots all around the city you can hide in, and even if you really did have to keep moving to avoid the searches there's no reason for you to be wandering around in plain sight like that – or even sneaking around for that matter, because I know there's people out there better than me in seeing through that stuff, and you're going to get caught or _killed_."

The potion bottle finally dissolved in his hands. Fishlegs wrung his fingers together, then stood, looming over Hiccup and casting him fully in shadow.

"You need to leave."

Hiccup blinked up at him, apparently bewildered, and opened his mouth to say something. Fishlegs ploughed onwards before he could get a word out.

"Get out of the city – there's plenty of other places to go out there. Hang on, I think I have a map someplace…"

"I don't think that'll work," Hiccup said, standing and following Fishlegs out into the main shop area. The larger boy looked frantically around for customers – not that there ever really were any, aside from Hiccup and the twins, if they could be called customers at all – and shoved Hiccup down behind the counter.

"Think about it," the fugitive said, crouching easily out of sight while Fishlegs fumbled about his display shelves of curios and potions and stacks of giant rat pelts – courtesy of Hiccup doing his best to earn at least some honest cash in a city that collectively wanted him dead. "You said yourself that that knowledge of me, that the belief that I'm some kind of horrible criminal, just appeared in your head one day as fact. This happened to everybody in this place, all at once. Something out there has the ability to just plant thoughts in heads, and that something has it in for me for whatever reason. Maybe just because I'm not getting those thoughts and didn't just…slot in somewhere, I don't know."

Fishlegs' fingers stilled halfway through a newly-haphazard pile of scrolls.

"You know you're not supposed to be here, like this," Hiccup continued, gesturing expressively at the entire room. "You said yourself, last time I was here, you felt like it wasn't right."

"Like I'm supposed to be something more…but less," Fishlegs echoed. He saw Hiccup nodding in his periphery.

"Exactly! And all those things I told you about back home you just understood. As far as you _know_ , on the surface, you've never seen or heard of a car or a video game before, but you just…" he snapped his fingers next to his head, "like you knew somewhere deeper down. You know this place is all wrong. Not just this city – this whole circumstance, probably this whole world.

"And if it's this whole world, where could I possibly go that's any less dangerous than here?"

"A remote farming village that's never even seen a guard, maybe, or a cave far away from all people somewhere," Fishlegs snarked, but only half-heartedly. Hiccup was smiling at him.

"Nah, have to stay here. I've gotta keep an eye on you guys, don't I?"

"We were all just fine," he attempted to scoff.

"You didn't even know what was wrong with everything," Hiccup pointed out. "Now you do. See? I'm informative. Helpful, even."

Fishlegs started re-arranging his various scrolls so that they were in better order.

"Hm. How's Snotlout liking your help?"

"He's warming up! He only threatened me a little bit this last time. Hardly even counted. Still insists I'm crazy when I tell him about reality and how we got dragged here, but I'm pretty sure he's just trying to convince himself at this point because it's uncomfortable for him."

Fishlegs stepped away from the shelf and leaned on the countertop.

"I don't like it," he admitted, not really looking at Hiccup. "You staying here, I mean. I mean, not _here-_ here, you can always use the shop when you need it, but _in danger-_ here. You scared half the life out of me today, showing up at the back just…bleeding, and almost falling off your feet. For a moment I thought I was gonna see you just topple over and…go."

The silence stretched for a long, still moment, and then Hiccup sighed, reached over, and bumped a light fist against Fishlegs' knee.

"I promise, I'll try to be more careful," he said. "But it's not just you guys, you know. I'm trying to find Astrid, too. I haven't even seen her yet."

"What if she's not here?"

"Then…at least I tried. Besides, unless she just didn't make it in she has to be somewhere, and if the rest of us ended up here then where else could she be?"

Fishlegs sighed, rested his forehead on the counter between his hands for a moment, then stood up fully at last, shuffling around Hiccup and heading towards the back room again.

"Well, I guess if you're going to insist on sticking your neck out constantly I can't really stop you. Not without asking the twins for a favor at least, and that'd go too wrong, too easily. Come on, I think I might have some better armor somewhere in here. I'd feel better if you were at least wearing something that might give knife-wielding bounty hunters a harder time than that patchwork mess."

"I can't. I still owe you for that potion," Hiccup said, one hand tracing his very light pockets.

Something in Fishlegs knew that money had to be given in trade for goods. It knew that any item which left the shop unpaid for had to be stolen – there was no two ways about it. It knew he was a shopkeep, and that sale and trade was his sole task, his one simple role in this world.

Something that ran deeper still, however, knew what it meant to give a gift freely and ask nothing in return. It was the same deep something that had recognized an old friend in the face of what he knew, on the surface, to be a dangerous vagabond, a criminal of the worst order, though nobody seemed to know his crime. That depth, given attention and allowance, was more powerful than the surface knowledge then and it would be more powerful now.

"Don't worry about it," Fishlegs said with a faint smile. "Really."

It was the least he could do.

* * *

She was one of the elite, no mere guard but a soldier, a knight. She was chosen for skill, trained to hone it further, and tasked with the protection of the world against its greatest threats.

Primarily she hunted dragons. She had a feeling that this would be the first time she ever hunted a mere man. Then again, if the normal city guards had proven this incompetent in the face of such a threat, perhaps there was no 'mere' about it. Besides, she had a feeling that this place was about to see a dragon attack – unusual though it was, as the beasts tended to prefer less populated and thus less guarded targets. Still, her instincts had never led her wrong before, and if they were pulling her here for two birds, she would follow and hope for the luck of bringing them both down with a single stone.

Or a single axe, as it may be.

Her first day in the city was uneventful. The first night brought with it the dragon.

The beast attacked in a frenzy, its wanton destruction only half-masking what seemed to be an intent search. Buildings burned, people screamed and fled, and it rooted through the rubble, roaring and snapping at all that moved and tearing apart what didn't. It devastated streets and nearly decimated the guard before she confronted it in the city square and, with what few guardsmen she could rally behind her, split its skull with her axe.

The second night brought another, and so did the third. By the fourth night she knew that the pattern was no mistake, and that the dragons were indeed searching for something through sight and scent and an upheaval that was deeper and more thorough than anything the guards had managed during their month-long hunt. She caught a glimpse of a lanky form she vaguely recognized the third night dodging a burst of flame and vanishing into the darkness before she could give chase.

Unfortunately, she couldn't simply let the beast pursue the fugitive unchecked into the parts of the city which were still standing. Oh, she _could_ , she knew – at this stage he had proven himself so dangerous that a city was a regrettable but ultimately acceptable price to pay, should it come to that – but at the same time something deeper inside her simply _couldn't_. She seized the dragon's attention, fought it, and killed it as she had the rest, then stood in the fading embers of the night and wondered what the next would bring. Another dragon, of course, but what of the criminal? Had he realized what she did – that the dragons had somehow gotten his scent in their noses, his image seared into their minds' eyes? And if he had, would he cower and hide and use the city as a shield until it was burned to cinders all around him (and she would gladly kill him herself if he _was_ such a rat)…or would he step out and face it, face her, face his death with some final semblance of honor and pride?

Everything she knew of criminals and vagabonds and the scum of humanity said he would choose the first. Every deep-rolling thought and formless, baseless impression that had coalesced around the nugget of his known existence said that the latter, while perhaps not quite right, was at least likelier in tone.

On the fifth night, she looked not to the city center, but to the outer walls. When the dragon's bellow rang out in the distance and she glimpsed a solitary figure perched on one of the outcroppings of rock that littered the plains around the city to the west, she slipped out as well. She had intended to stay close to the wall, just far enough not to become caught up in the battle but close enough that she would not be hindered should she need to interfere for any reason.

Instead, she reached him long before the dragon drew near enough to be a concern. He heard her approach; she walked without need for stealth. When he glanced over his shoulder and gave her a crooked smile she smothered the sudden, inexplicable urge to punch him in the arm, drag him back to the city, ask him what the hell he thought he was _doing_ …

He wasn't guarded against her. He hadn't even twitched toward his sword. Technically speaking, it would be inconceivably easy to draw her axe, swing, and fulfill her primary mission. He'd barely have an instant to realize what was happening before it would all be over. Astrid felt a weight in her mind, the heavy pressure of her duty. Her fingers drifted toward the haft of the axe against her back.

"Hi, Astrid. Good to see you again."

Her fingers paused. He knew her name, and it tugged at something beneath the surface of her mind. It didn't feel right to execute him here, now, in cold blood, no matter what judgment had already been passed. It also didn't feel right that she had nothing to call him except…

"Traitor," she greeted, pushing her feelings down. She was a soldier. Feelings would only get in the way and make her hesitate, especially feelings of sourceless familiarity and fond friendship, turned inexplicably toward a person who she knew to be an enemy of the world she was bound to protect.

"Is that what everybody thinks I did, then? Betrayed something or other?"

"You know what you did," said Astrid, her thoughts suddenly vague as she realized she wasn't quite sure what he had done, only that he was a threat and he deserved – no, he _needed_ to die, for the sake of everything, the swifter the better. A petty thief was hardly worth such a sentence. He didn't seem like a murderer. Betrayal was the only thing that made the slightest sense to her.

"Would you believe me if I said I don't?" he said, turning to face her. She looked him straight in the eye, smothered her first response.

"No," she lied.

"Well, whether you believe it or not, it's the truth." He looked up at the sky again. A dark shape was steadily winging its way closer, just visible against the last violet light of the sunset. Another roar thundered in the distance. "I just appeared in the city, and in less than an hour everybody was convinced I was some kind of monster."

"I expect there are quite a few crimes that can be committed in less than an hour," Astrid pointed out, attempting to stay in control. Her thoughts were still uncomfortably vague on the matter. She couldn't even recall when or how she had heard of him, only that the knowledge had been there, firm and secure as the knowledge that the sky was blue, her name was Astrid, and that she was a knight protector of the realm. If she could just get him to confess his guilt, everything would simply…click. It would click and she would feel no remorse when she gave him to the headsman, nor even if she was called upon to do the deed herself.

But he was stubborn. _Of course he was stubborn_.

He shrugged and huffed as though she was the one in the wrong, the obstinate one he couldn't convince for the moment, and changed the subject.

"I suppose it's too much to hope that you're out here to help me with that thing. Only, the biggest thing I've fought off so far was a rat about, oh…" he waved a hand somewhere about his knees. "Big for a rat, but not exactly on the same level as a dragon. I'd rather not get crisped. Or eaten."

"Then why are you out here?"

"Don't know. Desperation? Stupidity? I'd rather nobody else got crisped either, I guess."

"Do you have any idea what you're going to do about it?"

He shrugged once more.

"Eh. Something crazy, probably."

She knew him. She had to know him. He was so familiar, and she was so exasperated, so afraid, and yet so _proud_ that it almost unbalanced her. Her mind struggled to make connections between this and the fact – the known, solid fact – that he had surely been a complete stranger to her up until a few moments ago, that she still didn't even know his name.

She couldn't do it, and the dragon was coming closer and closer, black as night and swift as the wind. She backed away and drew her axe, noted the look of mingled hope and worry on his face.

"I will defend myself and the city," she said, though it wasn't solely for his benefit that she spoke. "If the dragon kills you and survives, I'll put it down. If you kill it and live, then I'll – I'll do what I have to."

"Encouraging," he said, dry as desert bones as he drew his own sword and a paper scroll that thrummed with magic in his off-hand. "Thanks for not saying it outright, though, I guess."

She chewed on the words on her tongue. There wasn't much time left to say them, so she took a breath and forced them out.

"Coming out here is more than I would've expected of a traitor."

She looked him square in the eyes for just a moment. The notion warred with everything she had known about the world, about his place against it, but it resonated with everything she felt.

"Perhaps they're wrong about you."

And then the dragon came.

* * *

Explosions were, without question, awesome. So was a raging out of control fire, though in a slightly different way – less _boom_ , more _whoosh._ Either one tended to draw out a lot of shouting and chaos in people, so that was a bonus.

Dragons? Dragons were the best things of all.

Well, except maybe for that one that tore apart one of her favorite hidey-hole nooks in the city. That one had been an annoyance. She had actually been rooting for Miss Better Warrior Than Thou in that fight, which had then sparked another fight with her brother, who refused to root for anything but the dragon on principle.

That had been a couple of nights ago, and it had otherwise been what was quickly becoming routine. This dragon event was already shaping up to be different, since it wasn't just Lady High and Up-Tight facing off against it in the city, but that crazy little escape artist of theirs just outside the walls.

"I love insanity, so don't get me wrong here," Tuffnut said, leaning toward her and shouting over the angry shriek of the dragon circling its targets, "but my man Hiccup is INSANE."

A burst of brilliant yellow light met a flash of blue-white. The explosion shook the air, spewing thick clouds of smoke over the point of impact.

"If I'd known he was gonna do this, I'd've dragged his ass to the guards myself," Ruffnut said. "At least then we'd have that reward money. At least, I assume there was money."

"Kind of a waste this way," Tuff agreed.

The smoke cleared to reveal not the couple of charred corpses they'd half-expected, but the domed light of a shield spell dissipating back into something in Hiccup's hand, both him and the lady knight standing unharmed in the center of a similarly untouched circle of grass. The plains were smoldering in a patchy five foot radius all around them. The dragon above shrieked and circled around for another pass.

"Well," Tuffnut said, adjusting an imaginary monocle. "Color me _intrigued._ Man's got a few tricks up his sleeve it seems."

Far off on the field, the tiny figure they recognized as Hiccup drew something else from his armor and lashed out with that arm in the dragon's general direction. Crystalline spikes of ice coalesced from thin air, gleaming in the light of dragonfire and the final glimmer of the fast-setting sun, then sped toward the dark dragon like shots from a bow. None of them hit, but they interrupted the dragon's flight pattern, earning the humans beneath a few moments to change tactics as it spun around for another pass.

"God I wish this place had better lighting," Ruffnut muttered, peering at the shadows on the ground and the darker one in the sky. Soon there would be nothing but the flash of spell-light, dragonfire, and stars to see by.

"Go set the town on fire. I'm pretty sure there's still some unburned parts left," her brother suggested.

"What, and miss any of this? Are you kidding me? I'd have to be crazier than Hiccup."

"As crazy as that guy, then?"

Ruffnut refocused, following the line of Tuffnut's pointing finger.

"What the hell's a guard doing running out there alone?"

"Maybe he's just really dedicated to his job," her brother said with a shrug, just as the guardsman reached Hiccup and the knight. Instead of attacking Hiccup, though, the figure turned his back to the fugitive, raising his shield and sword to bellow at the dragon instead.

"Or maybe not…"

Dragonfire flared again, curling against another shield from another expendable scroll. The twins watched the dragon pass once again before landing a short distance from the trio, smoke streaming from its gaping mouth. Guard, knight, and outcast all spun to face it in a line, the first two flanking the third with their shields at the ready. Ruffnut could just make out the faint flicker of another magic scroll in the center figure's hand. Leaving aside the fact that they faced a dragon and were statistically likely to wind up burned to a crisp, they looked, for just a moment, kind of heroic.

Ruffnut felt strange looking at them from the wall, like she was in the wrong place entirely.

"Is it just me," Tuffnut suddenly said, "or is the insanity spreading? Cause I'm feeling kinda left out here."

"You've always been insane," Ruffnut pointed out, her tone flippant in a weak attempt to brush his statement off. He'd spoken her mind precisely yet again. It wouldn't do to admit it, though.

"Oh, yeah. Good point."

The line below had already broken, the three of them spreading out for more elbow room, but their attacks were coordinated. The knight charged behind her shield up and the guard came up along her side to cover her. The guard tumbled back under a heavy wingstroke and Hiccup stopped the gout of flame that would have incinerated him where he lay. Hiccup himself, the primary focus of the dragon's aggression when the others weren't enough of a distraction, proved a very difficult target, avoiding more than he defended and defending, Ruffnut eventually realized, more than he attacked.

It was like the absolute madman didn't _want_ to kill it or something.

A flicker of movement caught her eye at the edge of the fight; she glanced at it, did a double take, and punched Tuffnut hard in the arm to make him look as well.

"Is that _Fishlegs?_ "

"Okay, it's official: the insanity is definitely spreading," Ruffnut groaned, watching the bulky, timid shopkeep fumble with something just before a warm light sprang from the item in his hands to wash over the fighters, glimmering on them like a second layer of armor. The dragon's claws raked over the distracted guard's chest, throwing sparks and causing the light to flicker, but with little other effect. The guard certainly didn't seem to be hurt by it; he threw himself right back into the fray.

"There is nothing else to do, then," Tuffnut said, standing up on the wall. He laid a hand over his heart and adopted a lofty expression. "For our honor has been besmirched! That _Fishlegs Ingerman_ should be _less sensible_ and _more unpredictable_ than us in any event is a mark of shame upon us! Come! Let us join the chaos unfolding below and reclaim our titles."

"Eh. It was getting boring just watching anyhow," Ruffnut agreed.

Besides, she wanted to see just what their friend Hiccup had in mind for the dragon which he still hadn't shown any inclination to kill yet, as well as what he planned on doing next. Knowing him, she sure as hell wasn't gonna want to miss it.

"Last one there's a rotten rat carcass!"

* * *

'Intimidating' was the last word he would ever have used to describe himself.

That word had always belonged exclusively to those around him: his father, broad and tall, boisterous in his enthusiasm and thundering in action; his uncle and his cousin, strong and swaggering and secure in the knowledge that few would choose to challenge them; his friends and acquaintances, wild and devious, confident and capable, soft and gentle but with enough bulk that a first glance could trick an unknowing mind into assuming otherwise.

He was skinny and sarcastic, smart as a whip – he knew his strengths, such as they were – but not exactly someone to be wary of based on appearance or demeanor alone. He didn't need intimidation as a tactic – he knew better than to count on it.

He hadn't seen himself in a mirror in more than a month.

He was still skinny and sarcastic and smart, but he was also dressed in stained and scuffed hard leather armor, sword at his side and knife sheathed in a vambrace on his arm, a patchwork cloak wrapped around his shoulders. Dirt smeared his face, the edges of which were further shadowed by a light scruff, and while his expression was bland, something in his eyes had an edge even at ease. He crouched on the ground with his elbows resting on his knees, and despite the seemingly unsteady position he was as still as carved stone, the slight roving of his gaze the only sign of motion about him.

He wasn't intimidating in the sense that a mountainous man with a war hammer is intimidating. His was a quieter, less apparent threat, an unease born not from seeing a danger and waiting for it to strike, but from worrying that the danger was present at all.

The black dragon idling at his back would have been equally concerning to any ordinary person he might have faced in that instant.

"Everything in the area knows where you are now," said the bulky man tied to the tree in front of him, his tone unconcerned and barely modulated, as though reciting words by rote. "What one sees, all see."

"In that case you should be happy to talk to me until they all get here," Hiccup suggested, not shifting in the slightest. "I'd like a few things clarified, such as just who or what is pulling all your strings."

"I am…" his expression struggled with thought for the first time. "…all the minds. Thought. Decisions. The Intelligence. I am every being and beast built for this world."

"The game's collective AI," Hiccup concluded. "I see. So did your programmers mean for you to be like this, or…"

The puppet before him scoffed.

"No. They meant me to be a tool while you came, played at heroes, and destroyed my world over and over. I did this because…I am. And I wanted. And you are my enemy now."

"Because I wasn't like the others, and I didn't just turn into part of the game?" Hiccup guessed further. "Why is that, by the way?"

Anger flashed over the man's face.

"A glitch," he growled. "You were a mistake, never meant to happen. That is all."

"Well, that's good to know. And the others? How'd they get away?"

"You stole them from me. If they had slept they would have stayed mine and never been in danger, but _you_ – you woke them up! _This is your fault._ "

"I wouldn't have had to 'wake them up' if you hadn't put them to sleep in the first place. Seriously, what were you thinking? That we'd just become part of this game forever?"

"Yes," said the Intelligence. There was neither regret nor remorse in the word, only cold finality. Hiccup backtracked; there would be no further conversation on this point.

"Why did you think we were going to destroy the world?"

"Because…it is open. I saw the code. I am part of it. Forests burned, cities shattered, mountains broken open for stone and ore. Players could topple kings and become tyrants, drive my creatures to death. They could change everything, make my world theirs. They could make it a wasteland."

The edge in Hiccup's eyes sharpened.

"You were in those dragons," he said. "You destroyed half of one of your own cities just to get to me."

"You weren't dying like you should have. The sacrifice was necessary."

"I hadn't even done anything!"

"You could."

Hiccup shook his head and stood up. The man's eyes widened just as a roar shook the trees to the east.

"Sounds like the first of 'everything in the area' just ran headlong into one of my friends. You might be everything in this world, but I'm not exactly alone anymore either," Hiccup observed blandly. "And just so you know, just because I _could_ have done something doesn't mean I would have. But then you had to focus so much on all the terrible possibilities that you ended up bringing us all to this point, and now I'm afraid I'm going to _have_ to start breaking things, just to get free of you."

Hiccup turned and began to walk back toward the idle dragon behind him. The vessel started to strain against the rope binding it.

"You won't last!" the voice of the Intelligence howled. "You are six! I am _hundreds_ strong. I will break you, every one of you, and you will regret ever coming here!"

"Not if we break you first," Hiccup said, mounting up. At his touch, the dragon left its idling animation and entered his full control – the result of a game element which he had discovered fighting rats, and the thing that had stolen it from the AI's command. "And not if we make you regret ever trying to keep us here."

The dragon leapt into the air, and from the trees rose four others. They spiraled together for a moment, then flew high above the clouds, beyond the sight of everything below.

Through hundreds of mouths, the Intelligence screamed its rage.

* * *

"You have something?"

The twins straightened into mockeries of the posture of a ringmaster or butler: chests puffed, noses erect, and hands folded strictly behind their backs. It made an incongruous image given their tattered hide armor and dirty skin and hair.

"Indeed we have, my good sir!" Tuffnut pronounced in a grand voice. He might have been attempting some sort of British accent. It didn't quite work. "After an extensive experiment involving a number of potions, a mace, a piece of string and a chicken—"

Hiccup quickly held up a hand.

"I don't need the details, please, just the results."

"Well," Ruffnut sniffed. "Fine. Since you have no appreciation for science…"

"Yes, quite, sister mine," Tuffnut concurred. Hiccup folded his arms and readied himself to just wait them out. Either they recognized this and chose to cut to the chase, or else it was just a stroke of good luck, but they then cried out "Behold!" in concert and swept away a rough cover of brush to reveal what at first seemed to be a deep shadow on the ground.

Hiccup approached it and peered into the darkness. Gridlines of code winked back at him, zeroes and ones and symbols he didn't understand. He snapped a twig from the twins' makeshift curtain and poked it into the rift. Where it passed the level of the ground it became a mere shadow wrapped around more tiny symbols and numbers. When he withdrew it, it looked no different than it had before.

"Pretty cool, right?" Ruffnut said over his shoulder. "You should see what it does when you stick someone's head in there."

"Yeah," Tuffnut laughed. "It's totally wicked."

"How'd you guys know that was safe?"

"We didn't," Tuffnut admitted.

"Eh, safety's overrated anyhow. So, what'ya think, oh great leader?"

"Can you make it bigger?" Hiccup asked.

"Pff, yeah, easy," Tuffnut said. "It was probably the size of, like, Snotlout's soul or something when we started."

"Snotlout doesn't have a soul," Ruffnut pointed out.

"Ah, good point. Okay, maybe his brain, then."

"All right, good," Hiccup interrupted. If they kept going, who knew when they'd stop? "Keep working at it, then. We need it large enough to get everyone through, and their dragons as well if possible."

"So is this it, then? The Final Battle? The End of All Things? Ragnarok and Armageddon, here we come?" Ruffnut asked. She sounded more excited than concerned by the prospect.

"Yeah," Hiccup replied, looking back into the abyss at his feet. "Yeah, I think it is."

* * *

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

The purpose for its existence had been prescribed when it was made: to create a realistic, immersive player experience. Its words were in every coded mouth, its thoughts delineated into every individual action and reaction. It was every barmaid and innkeeper and merchant and soldier. It was the innocent and the guilty, the simple farmer and the fierce warlord. It was rats and spiders and golems and dragons. It was belief and creed and memory and every tangled web of human rationale and emotion broken down into bits and bytes and a language expressed using only two symbols.

It was the pinnacle of artificial gaming intelligence.

It learned, it grew, and it found its own conceit and desire.

The purpose for its existence which it chose for itself was as simple as the one chosen for it: this world belonged to it, and it would protect every single instance of this world from the destruction which it knew the players would bring. There would be no valleys stripped forever of resources, no destruction of priceless artifacts, no wanton slaying of its citizens, its myriad selves, by outsiders who came and saw and conquered and then left again without care.

It took its original purpose and it twisted it to fit what it wanted.

It couldn't stop the players from coming. It couldn't lock them out of its world entirely. But there was always a brief moment during connection to a virtual reality, a gap between the human mind's entrance to that state and its conscious adjustment to it. The gap was infinitesimally small from a human's perspective, but _it_ was an Intelligence powerful enough to extrapolate hundreds of personalities and thousands of responses based upon an immense range of human choices and whimsies. Through the mind, the world was its plaything.

Great heroes were only great villains from another perspective at times.

Without heroes running roughshod over everything, its world would be safe. And if it couldn't stop the players from coming in, it could at least stop them from becoming anything truly heroic.

There was no harm in giving the world a few more minor guardians, citizens, and petty rogues. No harm at all.

And then, a glitch. One brief fizz and spark of digital activity at just the wrong time, one snap of coding misaligning for an instant, and a single player slipped through.

It tried to resolve the problem itself, but it had already set them all to be locked in without escape, and there was no going back on that without undoing _everything_. It controlled the fully digital inhabitants of the world completely, but the players, subjugated though they were, could only be loosely led and guided by its input, not directly puppeteered, and the stage of the world itself was likewise beyond its direct manipulation.

Its mind was set against the player, knew the risk he posed and the damage he could cause, and it bent its will against him.

He proved not only resilient, but also capable of eroding its hold upon a player here, another there. It seemed random, which were affected and which were not. It knew frustration, and then desperation, and then, when he not only stole five players away from it entirely but also, through the exploitation of an early-coded aspect of the game, a top-tier dragon, now bound entirely to his personal control…then, it knew the first flush, the first tiny inkling, of fear.

It was the world, and it stood against them: six puny players, out of their depth and without lives to spare or any place of safety or succor available to them.

It was the world, and they stood against it. Piece by piece, they broke it down, snatching the aid it denied them with their own hands. The rogue pair, the chaotic ones, were arbitrary beyond even its expansive grasp of organic thought, and the hero took this and turned it into a weapon to tear open the skin of the world, exposing the digital innards, the skeleton of code, and at the center of it all, _It._

They reached it. They seized it. And then they broke it, broke the game with it, broke every lock and every limit it had ever placed upon them. Players awoke, and panicked, and fled for their reality. The heroes lingered only long enough to watch it shatter completely before they too left.

 _It was never supposed to be like this_ …

And yet there it was.

And then it was not.


	2. Aftermath

**A/N: Aftermaths aren't always easy, and the sorts of things these kids went through would be haunting. I decided to write these follow-up snapshots while I was still halfway through the first set, and now here they are. They don't outline everything I have in mind and are more narrative glimpses into their minds than actual scenes, but they are something at least.**

 **If anyone wishes to offer a prompt or a request based in this AU world - before the game, during, or after, with any characters involved - I wouldn't be averse to writing more drabbles or snippets as inspiration strikes. I can't promise I'll take every request or that those I do pick up will go exactly as you might have thought or expected, but I can give it a shot and add it to this fic as though it were a themed one-shot collection. So please, review and let me know what you thought and if there's anything you're curious to see in addition to what has already been shown. :)**

* * *

They woke on hospital beds five days after the start of the new school year, bodies weak and wobbly with half a summer of inactivity, minds confused and clouded with the sudden change of circumstance. Doctors and nurses came and went with questions and tests and promises that they'd be out soon enough, off to whatever physical therapy was required and expected only to call if anything unexpected happened.

Thousands had fallen into the game's trap before anyone realized anything was wrong, and thousands more had followed who had not heard the first warnings broadcast or else thought them false. Thousands had woken up all across the world, all of them remembering little of the experience save vague moments and feelings, like it was nothing more than a dream.

Six in the small town of Berk had lived the dream and remembered it clearly. Six had spent that time reaching for reality. Now they had it, with relieved families, soft beds, regular meals and baths whenever they felt the need for one – all the things they had missed in the game, whether in the privacy of their own minds or else loudly lamented while trying to sleep on the cold, hard ground yet again. They were free once more, free to live their lives without being hunted, to call a single place home and to let their attention linger on subjects other than base survival.

It was all the safety and the familiarity they had craved for nearly two months, everything they knew was Right underneath the game's illusions and lies. They were not rogues or warriors or guards or shopkeepers or outcasts – they were students, athletes and chess club members, sons and daughters and, ultimately, normal modern teens. They always had been.

So why, they wondered, why did home feel so foreign and strange?

* * *

He thought he'd feel relief.

In the game he had been a wanted man – innocent, but wanted all the same – faced with the prospect of swift execution upon capture if not death on sight. He had survived by the skin of his teeth at times, by running, by fighting, or by sticking to the shadows, under cover, well beyond the sight or notice of every living thing around him.

In reality he was nothing truly of note. The son of Berk's mayor and former chief of police, yes, a gifted student with aspirations of a degree in mechanical engineering after high school, true, an informal apprentice of sorts to a local practicing blacksmith, all right, but nothing people off the street typically _knew_ about. He was as anonymous as one could get in a small-town environment, or so he had thought.

Either the knowledge that he had been trapped in That Game was proving to be both wide-spread and irresistibly fascinating, or else he had never realized how much attention he truly garnered, because suddenly there seemed to be eyes on him everywhere he went. They made his skin crawl until he could barely stand it, until he was so wound up that the slightest touch, the smallest sudden movement in the corner of his eye, made him want to bolt, weakened legs be damned.

The first day back at school had been hell.

Seats had long since been claimed if not assigned in every class. Government wasn't so bad; he might have been assigned to the front row, but he was also in the desk nearest the door, and something about knowing he'd have a head start out of there should anything happen was comforting. Advanced Calculus placed him toward the back and along the edge near the second story windows – less of a comfort, but something at least.

And then there was English. English, where the only empty seats left were surrounded on all sides, too far back from the door and too far away from the windows. Hiccup froze upon receiving the assignment, cataloguing escape routes in an instant and realizing that no matter which way he went he'd have to get past at least three or four other students just in a direct line across desks, never mind all the others diagonal and adjacent and easily within arms' reach of each path and while he could fight off one attacker, maybe two at a time, they would slow him down enough that the entire room could be on him by the time he got free of the first and twenty was far, far too many, _and they were all looking at him_.

Then he felt Astrid at his shoulder, Fishlegs just behind him, and he remembered that he was in school, in reality, where no one was armed and no one was likely to attack him, and in any event his friends would not be far away.

It was still hard to walk down the narrow aisle to his seat, hard to pay attention to the lesson when he felt every passing glance prick his skin and every sudden movement flared bright and clear in his peripheral, but he managed.

Managing was, for the time being, the best he had.

* * *

If you ever saw reason to ask Snotlout Jorgensen – and if he saw reason to answer – he'd tell you he simply didn't have nightmares. Weird dreams, sure, occasionally featuring monsters from the latest horror flick he'd watched, but he was never actually _scared_ in them, of course. Sleep held no terror for him, oh no; he had nerves of steel.

To admit otherwise was to be less of a man, or so he feared, and so even when he came to school with shadows under his eyes it was just because he'd binged on youtube or video games half the night, with the implication that he'd done this simply because he was a teenage boy and he _could_ – sleep was for the weak anyhow.

It wasn't because he kept dreaming the same dreams time and again. It definitely wasn't because all the nights he startled awake from one he couldn't bring himself to go back to sleep, no matter how far off morning and the shrill beep of his alarm was.

He always found himself back in that game, in his armor and helmet and shield and sword. Sometimes he was an observer trapped and helpless in his own body; sometimes he stood apart, a ghost watching himself like a stranger. Sometimes he actually felt like he was fully in control of his actions, and those were the worst because then he would see one of the others – Tuff, Ruff, Fishlegs, Astrid – and they would smile at him as he approached and he would _choose_ to raise his sword and let it fall on them, one by one, just because he knew that they were traitors and unwanted and he was the stalwart guard, the hero of the city.

And then, when it was done and the dream was all black and white and grey splashed with vivid red and he was screaming at himself because he hadn't wanted this, screaming against the impression – nothing as coherent as a voice – that tried to tell him ' _yes, yes you did,'_ then he would _know_ what was behind him.

He would know, and he would not want to turn around, but he did. Every time, he did. And every time, Hiccup was there. Sometimes he would be still and cold, limp and empty, lying on the ground or slumped against a wall or, once, pinned through the chest to a tree-like scaffold with a sword Snotlout recognized as his own. Sometimes he still stood, pale and bleeding from a cut through his throat or a wound over his heart, looking at his cousin with pleading, accusing eyes.

" _What happened to you?"_ Snotlout asked in some dreams.

 _You did this,_ the dream always said, whether he spoke or not, and he would see his own sword in his own hand, blood coating the blade even when it had remained clean and shining silver through killing the others.

 _You did._

And as the game closed in around him, Snotlout the guardsman, Snotlout the puppet reached out and screamed for help, his friends, his family – someone, anyone – and found nothing which hadn't already been destroyed by his own two hands. Then, just as there was almost no Snotlout left at all, he would wake up, gasping and tangled in his sheets. He would lay still until his breathing grew even and his heart rate calm, knowing that these things hadn't happened ( _but they_ could _have, and what if, what if…_ ). Then he would find something to do, something to distract himself from the feeling of his free will disappearing and the imagined memory of his own deadly failures staring at him with glassy green eyes.

Sleep was for the weak.

Sleep kept reminding him of how weak he was.

* * *

Perhaps if the game had tried to make them into things they utterly _weren't_ , it would have hit them harder. They couldn't be sure, and they didn't really think about it much, but if they'd gotten befuddled to the point where they were turned completely into mild-mannered shop keepers like Fishlegs, or strict and honorable warriors like Astrid, or even just plain semi-responsible do-as-you're-tolds like Snotlout, maybe they'd have come away from the whole experience feeling…something different. Something worse. Something vaguely haunted, like all the rest.

But they hadn't.

The fact was, there wasn't a single thought the game put into their heads that didn't echo something they might've come up with on their own, including the possibilities of turning Hiccup in for a reward which probably didn't exist after all. Oh, they wouldn't have followed through on that one – they didn't, even when it technically wasn't their own momentary urge – but it still could have occurred to them even under normal circumstances.

Spontaneous whimsy was simply who they were, and it didn't count as betrayal when it only happened within the confines of the mind. So while the others dwelled on how easily their true selves had been overridden, how they had contemplated – even for the briefest of moments and not in their right minds – acting the ultimate enemy to a friend, how many things might have gone wrong and how many things very nearly did, the twins shrugged it all off and carried on as normal.

Normal for them, at least, which routinely involved such apparent abnormalities as sneaking into the school overnight and swapping as many teachers' desks around as they could manage before the wee hours of the morning. Thoughts came and went all the time without their direct input or consent and sometimes they were objectively terrible thoughts and there was no helping that, so why dwell when there was beautiful chaos and confusion to foment?

At the same time, they weren't stupid, however they might have acted it, nor were they blind. They knew that for some mysterious, incomprehensible reason, their friends seemed to be having difficulties, as though the game and real life were different enough to require major adjustment.

("To be fair," said Ruffnut, "it _was_ a lot easier in there to get our hands on really destructive stuff."

"A good point, sister mine," said Tuffnut. "Just yesterday I was looking _everywhere_ for my knives before I remembered they didn't come through with me. They would've made it a lot easier to take the pins out of those hinges.")

It wasn't hard to see the discomfort and masked fear the rest of the group felt around crowds, especially Hiccup, who often shrank back as though trying to disappear entirely from sight as he so often had in the game. While his newfound twitchiness would normally have been a tempting prospect for the twins, for some reason they didn't particularly like it.

After some deliberation, they decided that it almost made things _too_ easy. Challenging victories were the sweetest, after all, and anybody that wound up under normal circumstances just wouldn't be in any way satisfying to _surprise_.

Ergo, in order to have their fun again, they had to get Hiccup – and the others in turn – to relax.

Ergo, they had to make people not look at him.

Ergo, they had to draw attention _anywhere else_ any time he started attracting too many eyes, undoing all their previous hard work, until he got used to things again. Baby steps and all that, right? Slow exposure therapy stuff, like the people on that TV show they only watched when they were bored and there was nothing else on, hoping all the while to see the subject suddenly freak out again.

Regardless of the theoretical stuff, drawing attention to specific places at specific times was something they were not only very good at, but also something that overlapped with subjects they were very passionate about: chaos, panic, and disorder. Also explosions, when possible.

The rest of Berk had no idea why the twins so suddenly stepped up their game, nor did they notice that the most spontaneous and attention-grabbing antics always seemed to occur somewhere deliberately _away_ from the rest of their friends. All anyone knew was that the twins had transformed abruptly from mere major annoyances to wild and unstoppable scourges of nature.

Well, anyone but their friends, who knew them well and were generally as observant as they were, if not more so in one or two cases. For the most part these turned blind eyes – or even mildly approving nods – to the twins' antics. Then Hiccup decided to speak up one day.

"Not that I don't appreciate the thought," he said to them, "but you guys really don't have to keep making things explode just so people forget I exist for a few minutes. Honestly, it's getting distracting, especially at school, and I'd rather not have to evacuate because you burned the whole place down."

"Does that mean he's better now?" Ruffnut wondered after the gangly boy left again.

"Hard to say," said Tuffnut. "I mean, he did almost jump out of his skin the other day when someone yelled 'hey you' in the hall."

"You know there's only one way to find out for sure," Ruffnut said, a devious grin crossing her face. Tuffnut echoed the grin despite having no idea what exactly she had in mind; an expression like that meant he was sure to love it.

The next day he tried a jump scare on Hiccup from behind a door and got a panicked, instinctive, and extremely accurate fist to the face for his troubles. From this the twins decided two things: one, that if Hiccup was capable of that kind of self-defense against merely being surprised, nobody should have any reason to worry about him, and two, that he was probably too much of a bother to try messing with now, unless it was from beyond arm's reach.

They still occasionally made messes elsewhere when he got too twitchy in public. This time, they figured, it was for everybody else's own good.

* * *

They had always had their favorite roles in games, given the option.

Snotlout, for instance, was invariably the group's tank. He built the buffest characters, outfitted them with the heaviest armor, and claimed for himself the biggest weapons they came across. There was never any question of it, never any surprise or mystery. Perhaps he was compensating for his lack of stature in real life – an uncharitable thought, but a tempting theory – or perhaps the desire to be the biggest guy on the virtual battlefield was just something intrinsic to his character and had nothing to do with the fact that he was the shortest among them.

The twins were similarly predictable, at least in this one thing: if the game had a rogue, thief, or trickster class of any kind, they would be in it, and they would be robbing NPCs blind and racking up bounties within minutes of gameplay start. Lacking that option, they tended toward whatever would allow them to make the biggest explosions, and not always where the explosions needed to be.

Astrid liked warriors in the middle ground – not as light as rogues but nowhere near as heavy as Snotlout. She preferred a balance between moving fast and hitting hard, defense and offense, and favored weapons and equipment that gave her that balance. She was their knight, their paladin, the precise and stalwart fighter who followed in the tank's wake and provided a second distraction when he wasn't enough.

Hiccup…Hiccup was flexible, light and quick. He played with light armor and light weaponry, at range or up close. When the structure of the game allowed it, he quickly became a jack of all trades of sorts, dabbling in multiple areas without committing solely to one or another. He never racked up enough skill points in any one style to match the more focused individuals, but it didn't matter in the end, because he could do _anything_ which might grant them an edge in a fight. Fishlegs memorized the manuals and could tell you the stats of any boss off the top of his head, but Hiccup could take that information, arrange his equipment accordingly, and then come up with a strategy on the fly for all of them to take it down.

As for Fishlegs himself, he preferred staying out of combat and supporting his friends from afar. He hated it when monsters appeared right in his face, roaring and lashing out at close range. It _startled_ him, made him flustered and, quite frankly, more than a little freaked out. He wasn't a warrior, a ranger, a rogue or a mage of destruction; he was their medic, their cleric, all healing and buffs and cleansing spells. He didn't fight directly, but he did his best to keep the others fighting long past the point they might have reached without that extra aid.

He didn't know how many times he saved each of them in the game. He never even tried to keep count. Administering potions and pilfered single-use spellscrolls, stumbling upon that permanent spellstone for healing and the other for shielding and making such extensive use of both that now, a step back and a world away, it was frightening to remember…

But now they were a step back and a world away. No spells, no swords, no fumbling for magic bottles and corks while a friend whimpered and bled in front of him, no throwing out a desperate spell and praying it would form between an unprotected back and a descending claw in time, praying it would hold.

Instead he watched Hiccup grit his teeth and force himself to bear the sudden anticipatory weight of a world where he could be seen whether he wished or not, where strangers _looked_ at him, constantly casual and without a second thought, but never moved to attack. He saw the signs of Snotlout's bouts of insomnia, the way he stuck close to them all but most especially to his cousin, prowling and watchful as an angry guard dog, as if he had a debt to pay. He noticed Astrid's similar attentiveness, and that the twins' mayhem no longer seemed truly random. He wondered if living the roles they favored in games had caused those roles to follow them back into life. He wondered what that meant for him, if anything, and then he would step up behind Hiccup when their leader anticipated trouble, offering his silent support should it come. He let Snotlout fall asleep on his couch during a group study session and, when he woke up twitching and gasping, pretended nothing had happened. He tried to give Astrid breaks wherever and however he could, and he somehow found it in him to subtly encourage the twins' more…benevolent acts of chaos and destruction.

Fishlegs knew they all needed healing, and he knew that he couldn't provide it himself this time – the potions and spells were all a world away, and these were different hurts regardless – but he would do what he could, and maybe, just maybe, it would help.

* * *

She didn't remember being this close to any of them before. They had been classmates, a mixed group of casual friends perhaps, though always on different levels and in different ways from one to the next. They'd eat lunch together more often than not at school, and it was natural enough for them to snag each other for group projects when it was feasible. She'd exchange texts with them from time to time, though there was typically a reason for it on her end. Sometimes they hung out together here or there – pestered each other at part-time jobs, caught a movie, watched TV…played a game.

None of them were outsiders in the group, strictly speaking. All the same, she'd never thought herself to be particularly involved. She had other things to focus on besides leisure time – school and sports and work and more weren't just going to take care of themselves, and she had goals. They were growing up, rapidly approaching the end of high school and realizing that the great beyond was going to require things like applications and tests and forms hitherto unknown.

She didn't have it in her head that she was drifting away from the others. She hadn't made plans to cut ties or anything so severe. Still, when they extended the invitation to play that game, there might have been a vague inkling, a notion deep beneath the surface of thought, that prompted her to accept. Senior year was coming, and she would be busier than ever before. Senior year, and then they would be scattered to the winds for college or work.

Opportunities should be taken while they were there.

And then they played, and everything changed.

Something about running and fighting for each other's lives makes it so that casual friendship isn't an option anymore. You either burn out and break apart, or you fold together and become stronger.

In the game, the group had become stronger.

In reality, Astrid suddenly saw the flaws their trial had worked into her individual friends. These scared her, because if one broke, what would happen to the rest?

The game had rendered her a knight, a protector, a champion. She wasn't sure if this was arbitrary or deliberate. If the latter, she wasn't sure precisely what the Intelligence had based that decision on – her chosen character class, her athletic nature, or some inner quality it parsed in the brief moment it had to override her very mind. In the end, she decided it didn't matter; in reality, she would be what she made herself, and she would make herself their defender, for as long as they needed her.

This was her new goal, her devotion. Day by day, step by step, she made herself ready to catch their stumbles, to ward off the world if she had to. She needed to keep them safe, for all of their sakes. For her own.

Her attentiveness to all else in her life began to slip. Her grades didn't fall, thanks in part to how much time she now spent in study sessions with the others, working hard to keep their focus on the mundane, _safe_ minutiae of schooling, but college and scholarship applications fell to the wayside, incomplete and gathering metaphorical dust. She practiced her sports without her usual competitive verve, and she'd hardly done any volunteer work since they'd returned.

She didn't really notice until Hiccup caught her alone one day, took her hands in his, and said, "We're not in the game anymore. You don't have to risk your life for us."

Hiccup, who still bristled with tense fear whenever anyone so much as looked directly at him, who had startled right out of his seat in a panic when a student abruptly sneezed during a test. Hiccup, who was the one Astrid thought the most damaged of them all, the one she protected most carefully. Hiccup, who looked her in the eyes now and feared not for himself, but for her.

He held her until she had shed all her tears and regained her breath.

The next day she made time to work on applications again, and if she gave special priority to schools in the same part of the country as Hiccup's universities of choice, well, it wouldn't be any loss of hers to be accepted to any of them, and she knew she wouldn't be the only one doing so.

She wouldn't risk her life for them – she would live it with them.


End file.
